Wyoming, Part 2: The Drive

The drive seemed to be off to a good start- rainbow, herd of buffalo, very few other people around, and I had agreed that Mitch could drive as far as he wanted. Mitch likes night driving, I hate it. But we were headed toward Mount Rushmore, which was about 8 hours away, and had gotten started later than expected due to Nike Store fun. We drove the rest of the Yellowstone loop and exited the park with out incident. Then headed to the booming metropolis of Cody, Wyoming, the nearest town.

We figured Cody would have some food and gas and whatever else we needed. We got in about 11pm. And it looked like a ghost town. On a Friday night, at 11pm, the activity in Cody was none. There appeared to be one bar with about 10 cars out front. I’m not sure what the kids in Cody do on a Friday night- but it’s not be in or around downtown. We managed to find one drive thru that was still open, so at least we got some food.

After Cody, we hit the big state high way- all of two lanes, with no lights. I was not thrilled. We listened to some podcasts- at this point we’ve finished both seasons of Serial and have gotten into Nightvale. 

The road got windier as we continued. Apparently Wyoming is into windy roads, because that’s all there was. We went up and down and around basically every hill or mountain in the area from what I could tell.

And then we got roadkill number two. Number one was a squirrel I hit in Oregon- small, noticeable bump, but nothing to worry about. Number two was a raccoon. The seemingly suicidal raccoon ran into the road as we came around another bend. Mitch tried to swerve, but raccoon was determined and ran under the tires. It was a very large thump this time. Very large. That raccoon was not a small guy. We did not stop to check on his welfare because it was midnight in rural Wyoming, and let’s be real- he was definitely dead.

As i noted this was now the second kill in the (prior to this brand new) car, Mitch commented that “he has a taste for blood”. We’re going to have to watch this one; stone cold killer. 

There were also approximately a million deer on the road. This became the most stressful drive of my life, watching for deer- and spotting them every other minute- and making sure they didn’t run in front of the car. More than once we had to stop because a deer was standing in the middle of the road. We tried to stop in some tiny town, but every hotel was closed. Yes, closed. So we kept driving, and kept spotting deer, until we came to Buffalo, Wyoming and the beautiful sight that was a Motel 6 that was open! I was so happy to see that crappy hotel and crawl into that rock hard bed. 

The car was not quite as lucky. The raccoon left his mark and broke a piece of the bumper and cracked some weird things under it. This was remedied, temporarily, by some Buy 1, Get 1 Free gas station duct tape. The car is looking good…